


i heard a tapping somewhat louder than before

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 16:43:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20660426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: The new girl in the cabaret proves to be a problem for Zelda.





	i heard a tapping somewhat louder than before

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a prompt fill for the group chat: burlesque.

Zelda has just finished her set—all slinking and growling, draping her lithe body over various props, drawling half-sung innuendo. Very little attention is ever paid to the quality or timbre of her voice singing these double-entendres. She can’t bring herself to care. It’s too much fun to care. It’s a lark more than anything.

Her act is semi-legitimate and there are a handful of others just as semi-legitimate: a former opera diva who performs her old arias but now mostly nude, a hack magician who’s added obscene jokes to his antiquated routine. But most of the performers are strippers. Sure, they all have gimmicks, but they all take their clothes off eventually. Zelda doesn’t begrudge them. Do what thou wilt, especially if what thou wilt results in cold, hard cash. She’s even contemplated joining them, but her act has its charms and people like it for what it is. Why give away anything more when what she’s already given satisfies? And anyway, she knows plenty of other ways to make money if she were hard up, which she isn’t.

She’s not exactly hiding. At least, that’s what she tells herself. 1920s Berlin is a place she can indulge herself in myriad ways. If it’s also a place no one she knows will look for her, well. That’s just a bonus.

She’s in the audience now after having performed—as is her way and wont—to experience the other acts. She doesn’t spend a lot of time in the dressing room, doesn’t care to mix with the other performers. She has a small witch community and a few mortal acquaintances, and she likes to keep herself mostly anonymous that way.

A rare mortal friend is pressing a lukewarm gin into her hand, saying into her ear,

“New girl next. From England they say.” 

The curtain goes up, and the stage is dark. A kick bass drum, a brush on a cymbal.

“‘Pack up all my cares and woes,’” a disembodied voice sings.

The pit band follows: a walking bass, tentative viola and cello harmonies, some delicate tremolo piano.

Spotlight on a woman with her back to the audience. Her blonde hair is two-decades-ago long and braided and hanging down her back. She’s wearing a conservative cotton dress also from two decades ago, and suddenly she peeks her head over her shoulder, sings,

“‘No one seems to love or understand me.’”

She smiles, and her dimples are so arresting, and her deft fingers begin pushing the dress down her shoulders.

Zelda’s friend husks into Zelda’s ear,

“She’s got me hooked, for sure.”

Zelda shushes her friend, refocuses on the woman on the stage. She knows very well who the woman is, but she needs to know why and how. Do what thou wilt is a great motto until it comes to your baby sister you’ve always secretly and shamefully wanted to possess. Do what thou wilt is a great motto until it doesn’t protect you from yourself.

The dress hangs at the woman’s waist, and her rather old-fashioned corset is visible. The woman turns around and shimmies out of the dress entirely. She’s all corset and stockings and shy, demure smile. This is her gimmick. She’s every pure and polite Victorian lady the audience members have ever fantasized about, stripping for them, baring herself to them individually as they wished their mother’s beautiful bridge partner had or as they wished their school mistress had. It’s quite a gimmick, indeed.

“‘Bye bye, blackbird,’” the woman sings as she unclasps her left garter.

“I need more to drink for this,” Zelda says, her face hot, the tips of her ears red.

Her friend is too enraptured to respond, so Zelda hauls herself to the bar alone. But still she can’t drag her eyes away.

“Whiskey. Neat. Double,” Zelda barks, eyes still fixed on the stage and the woman who is disrobing slowly and methodically, still with an air of propriety and reticence.

xxx

Forearm obscuring tits. A fan covering bush—is that a British visual pun?

“‘Bye bye blackbird.’”

The curtain falls.

Zelda downs her third whiskey, doesn’t participate in the applause.

xxx

Hilda’s in the dressing room, hopping into pleated trousers and then buttoning a boxy blouse.

At Zelda’s presence, standing imperiously in the doorframe, the other girls dissipate. Zelda waits until they’re all gone and then:

“What in the actual fuck, sister?”

Hilda rearranges the makeup at her station, says,

“Hmm?”

“Don’t act daft. You know what I’m talking about.”

Hilda then looks at her. She says,

“Whatever happened to ‘do what thou wilt’?”

“Don’t you dare,” Zelda says.

“I’ll dare whatever I want,” Hilda says. She shoulders past Zelda and exits.

xxx

The next week, after Zelda’s set she sits in the audience, as per usual. But she now knows what to expect and so plies herself with bourbon so that she might endure it.

Hilda’s got a different song, a different routine, the same nudity. Zelda does not confront her about it this time.

xxx

A third week. A fourth week.

Zelda knows she’s not safe. She contemplates different locations. She considers leaving and doesn’t admit to herself why she hasn’t left already.

xxx

Seventh week.

Zelda is about fit to be tied. 

Her anger has been steadily simmering. She can distract herself well enough in the daytime—running errands, socializing, writing letters, teaching Vinegar Tom tricks. But still a thought will appear unbidden: Berlin’s no podunk town with one bar, so why had Hilda chosen this particular cabaret? Or sometimes, why had Hilda chosen this particular type of performance in the first place? Or sometimes, why hasn’t she asked Hilda these questions in a more reasonable way? And uncomfortably often, why does she feel so compelled to watch each performance?

Her anger, and perhaps something else, has been steadily simmering, like that idiot frog deposited into a pot of tepid water that grows hotter and hotter until before he knows it he’s cuisses de grenouilles à la provençale.

xxx

Seventh week, and it’s back to “Bye Bye Blackbird” but the costume is different.

Hilda’s more a stylized version of the aloof Victorian lady they’d all wanted to fuck in their misspent youths. There are iridescent black feathers here and there. It’s a modern bustier instead of an old-fashioned corset.

She doesn’t strip all the way, just a flash of milky flesh and a strategic fan. She’s gotten good at this.

“‘Bye bye blackbird.’” And curtain.

xxx

Hilda had always been rather a magpie, collecting shiny things and marveling at them, treasuring them, hoarding them. In her childhood she had curated at least three different stashes of various found objects.

Zelda had always been more of a crow. Sure, she might be attracted to shiny things, but she was more intrigued by practical items. Things she could use for a specific purpose.

Either way. Both blackbirds.

And quoth the raven, a different blackbird entirely, nevermore.

xxx

Zelda’s in the back alley the dressing room lets out to. She’s leaning against the cool brick smoking a cigarette and waiting. She flinches every time a blonde crosses her periphery. Finally it’s Hilda, and she extends her hand, places it on Hilda’s forearm. Hilda visibly stiffens, and her forearm is flexed and firm beneath Zelda’s fingers. But their eyes meet in the refraction of gaslight from the main street.

“Ought to be careful grabbing folks. Women these days are ready to defend their own honor,” Hilda says.

“And what honor might you have?” Zelda finds herself hissing.

Hilda scoffs even as she fluidly extricates herself from Zelda’s loose hold.

“I was under the impression we weren’t speaking to each other,” Hilda says.

“I’ve had a change of heart,” Zelda says.

“And what if I haven’t?” Hilda says.

Zelda advances on her, bullies her into a shadowed corner of the alley, looms over her.

“I’ll admit you haven’t had a change of heart. But only because your heart’s always been the same.”

Hilda is trapped both by Zelda’s verbal assertion and Zelda’s hands on either side of her head.

Hilda looks at Zelda’s taut forearms in turn and then her avid face. Hilda says,

“If you want to lie about your own heart, do what thou wilt. But I refuse to do so.”

Zelda kisses her then, hard. She forces her tongue in, sucks at Hilda’s bottom lip.

“Is that what you mean?” Zelda says, panting.

“Yes,” Hilda says, also panting. “But it’s not all I mean.”

“And that’s why you found me here—”

“That’s why you allowed yourself to be found.”


End file.
